


From Bad to Worse

by The_Winter_Straw



Series: Straw's Super-Amazing Fantastic Quarantine Request Booklet Extravaganza [3]
Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: 74th Hunger Games, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, POV Second Person, Reader-Insert, reader replaces katniss, wildly unlikely scenario
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:13:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24234844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Winter_Straw/pseuds/The_Winter_Straw
Summary: Absence makes the heart grow colder.
Relationships: Cato (Hunger Games)/Reader
Series: Straw's Super-Amazing Fantastic Quarantine Request Booklet Extravaganza [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1748251
Comments: 1
Kudos: 15





	From Bad to Worse

**Author's Note:**

> As the tag says, this is a wildly unlikely scenario. Even ignoring swapping Katniss out for someone else (something I don't really feel comfortable with, but seems to be the norm in this fandom), I just don't think there would be travel between Districts. That was the prompt, though, so, oh well! I did try to differentiate the reader quite a bit from Katniss, if nothing else. 
> 
> This request came from nilla/nilla8594 on Quotev.
> 
> **Prompt:** Reader replaces Katniss as District 12 Tribute; met Cato as a child.

The Capitol truly was a world apart from the one you knew in District 12. Watching the interviews every year growing up could not fully prepare you for the day you would yourself step inside the glitz and glamour that usually remained trapped within the wonky box inside your living room. Even long after tripping off the stage, lights seemed to pop across your vision; the colors around your head blurred; unfamiliar voices drifted without meaning through you ears, as though they were not speaking in English. Only one thing remained solid and real: your fellow Tribute, Peeta Mellark, helping you to remain standing as he had since the very beginning of your shared ordeal. 

At least the cameras were off—the ones that played your life for everyone in Panem to see—so that the viewers at home would not yet be able to make out what an enormous liability you were. Not yet! The thought burst as a bubbling half-sob, half-laugh from your lips. As though you could continue pretending after _that_ fiasco back there. Cinna had done his best. Yours and Peeta's entrance could not have gone better. Too bad you'd shed all that good will the moment Caesar Flickerman got you on your own. 

His questions were bad enough. Why had he chosen to remind you that a girl from _your_ kind of family (even if that family _was_ from _your_ little Podunk district) should never have found herself in your place? No trouble made with the Peacekeepers; no need to take out a tesserae; no loved one on the chopping block. Your name had only been entered for your birthdays. Nothing less. Nothing more. You thought it was his job to make you look _good_ , not coax you into crying in front of the entire country! 

But even that you thought you could have managed if tonight you hadn't seen _him._

"[Name]. We're here." 

Peeta's voice hardly made a dent in your fugue state. Only his releasing you just enough to cause you to teeter allowed you to wake up. You stumbled; he made a grab for you. Once more you felt a rush of gratitude. Thank God a bunch of children getting onto lifts to their separate floors of the facility was not interesting enough to require a live feed. Your opponents still took note of your behavior as they milled around the area or marched into one of the waiting elevators...or maybe they did not either. After that disaster of an introduction, you highly doubted anyone had marked you as a threat. A few eyes flashed in your direction when you clung to Peeta for dear life. Someone snickered. Anything worse wasn't allowed. 

"Come on. Let's get you upstairs—" 

Your sudden reluctance to follow him cut him off. There sat your lift, waiting to take you up to temporary safety, but all of a sudden it looked to you like a gaping maw. You carefully pulled free of Peeta's grip. 

"You go on ahead," you said with a shake of your head. 

"What do you _mean_? I can't just leave you down here!" 

He had a right to sound exasperated—though keeping your argument quiet leeched some of the heat from his voice. You'd already put him through too much. Following him back upstairs to get screamed at by Haymitch was the right thing to do. Maybe that was the problem: You were tired of _trying_ to do the right thing. If Peeta's softened expression was anything to go by, he seemed to be able to read your mind. 

"It won't be that bad," he said. 

"Oh, sure. Haymitch already knew I was going to screw everything up! How bad could it be after I proved him right?" 

"You were hardly the worst one out there." 

You tried to snort, but were too hysteric for the sarcasm to take hold. 

Sighing, Peeta looked around. There weren't very many Tributes left in the foyer. Why would any of them linger? No one had to make an attempt to know that escape would be impossible even in the rare moments the Gamemakers pretended to leave you all alone. Then his blue eyes settled once more on your face before he asked: 

"How long do you need?" 

The opportunity was too good for you to do anything other than jump at it. "Just a few minutes." 

"And what do you plan to _do_ with those minutes?" 

"Pull myself together. Please, Peeta. I'll be up in the next elevator, promise! Don't make me face Haymitch and Effie yet." 

Whether it was the hoarse edge to your voice or your already ruined makeup, something about your pleading convinced him. Peeta nodded once, patted you awkwardly on your shoulder, and went over to the open elevator waiting nearby. Before the doors closed, he looked one last time at you. 

"I'll see if I can talk him down," he said, "but you better be up on the next one. Be careful." 

Any assurances you might have made were swallowed by the lift shutting over Peeta's face. His warning did not seem entirely necessary, either. Many of the other Tributes had made their way to their own floors by then—many, you realized, but not all. One open lift remained, and through its open doors issued laughter occasionally cut across by attempts to convince the only waiting couple to hurry to join the revelers. 

The girl seemed eager enough. She was smaller, with dark hair pulled up into a perfect bun. Her dress left her shoulders bare and was an even more vibrant orange than the boy's hair. He towered above her. His team had put him in a suit that made him look more intimidating than ever—and he'd already looked pretty intimidating in all the reels you'd been forced to see of your fellow Tributes leading up to that night. Fear, however, was not what caused you to feel as though someone (perhaps the girl; Clove, if you remembered correctly) had punched you in the stomach. 

"Come on, Cato!" She tugged on his wrist to no avail. "We don't want to get left behind." 

"Yeah, Cato. Think we'd let you have Clove all to yourself?" called a male voice from the elevator. 

A chorus of giggling accompanied this statement. Their gaiety forced a shiver up your spine. That lift was filled with Careers, and you'd just elected to stay here without Peeta to serve as even a distraction. The smart thing to do would have been to call another lift and get out of there before you caught any of their eyes. Then again, when had you _ever_ been smart? You couldn't keep your eyes off Cato, let alone consider leaving his presence. 

He grinned at his temporary friends as he shook Clove's hand off of him. "I don't know. Looks pretty full in there already." 

"For you? We'll _make_ room," said one of the girls. 

"Be careful, Glimmer! No bloodshed before we get to the Arena, remember?" said another. 

"Don't worry, Cato. I don't bite. Much." 

How they could all be so jovial was beyond you. Everything about the Career Tributes was. With you looking on, Cato gave Clove a little shove toward the lift. 

"You go on," he said. "I'll catch up with you right away." 

All she had time for was a suspicious look back at him before a host of arms extended from the elevator and dragged her inside. 

"We'll keep her warm for you," said the first boy. 

"Hey, you do what you want. It'll be awfully hard for you to win if you make her cut your hands off before we even get to training." 

Everyone laughed again, even Clove. Then the doors slid quietly over all their perfect faces, silencing the Careers just as they had silenced Peeta. Up the group glided, up and up and up, and when it finally disappeared entirely from your view, you realized you were all alone. 

All alone. With him. With Cato Hadley. The last person in the entire world you'd ever thought you would see again. 

You sucked in a breath before you rushed over to your elevator. District 12—as you had been reminded of that night—might not have had much, but even _it_ had an elevator. Unfortunately, it had no elevators like these. No call button existed for you to bring yours down. Of course. Why give any of you the option of lingering anywhere you might do something the Gamemakers hadn't planned? A sudden icy terror washed over you with a single thought: What if they never sent another down lift to get you again? What were their other options? Could they truly kill or main you before you ever set foot inside their Arena? 

"So it was you. I really hope it wouldn't be." 

A single voice broke through the shell of panic forming around your mind. It was soft, familiar—not a Peacekeeper, then, or whatever they had in the Capitol. You risked a look at the only person that the voice could belong to and found that Cato's face was not even angled in your direction. He had slipped his large, square hands into the pockets of his suit jacket, looking for all the world as though you were of as much to concern to him as one of Effie's horrendous wigs. 

Which, of course, you were. If you had proven one thing during your interview, it was that no one had any reason to count you as a serious competitor here. The weak, weepy girl from District 12 could only hope her counterpart would carry her through those first few days just as he had helped carry her off the stage into this lobby. 

"When I heard the name of the girl from District 12," the voice went on, "I thought it couldn't be. No way. They don't have volunteers there, and, well, why would _you_ volunteer? You never would." 

His lips barely moved as he spoke this second time. It hit you then that he was trying to fool the cameras sure to be trained on this very spot. Though the Tributes piling into lifts could hardly be interesting enough for broadcast, of course someone in the Capitol was still watching your every move. Haymitch had often called you slow on the uptake since your Reaping, but never had you felt it more accurate than you did in that moment. 

You snapped to attention with your eyes trained on the doors in front of you. _Blink_ , you told yourself as you stared straight ahead. It was hard to look natural, though, when so much of your brainpower remained focused on the boy to your left. 

"What do you mean, I'd never volunteer?" you asked, trying to keep your voice as low as his. 

"There _are_ no volunteers in Districts like yours," he answered. 

"Just because _we_ don't get the same preferential treatment that you—" 

"Besides, you never struck me as the kind of girl to _want_ to be here either." 

"Maybe I've changed." 

"No." You thought you saw, out of the corner of your eye, Cato risk a glance over at you. "You haven't changed one bit. Still a big crybaby, for one thing." 

You felt color rise in your cheeks. "How do you know? I might just be camera shy. Maybe I've learned a thing or two since we saw each other last." 

"Learning's got nothing to do with it. You're too soft. Always have been. I never forgot you, District 12 Girl." 

Your throat burned with unshed tears. This time, you were determined to keep them inside where they belonged. You could only hope that anyone observing this scene would assume your burning face had more to do with fear than anything else. That would make the most sense. Of course the unprepared, unwanted Tribute from District 12 would be terrified at finding herself trapped alone and unguarded with the brute from District 2. 

"I'm surprised you found me memorable at all," you said huskily. 

"It's kind of hard to forget a girl you never should have met." 

He was right: Your knowledge of each other was fluke. A few twists of fate long ago had been all it took to put you in this horrible position. If Cato had not been the child of some prominent family in his District and you the same in yours; if his father had not had some government-sanctioned reason to travel all the way to speak with yours; if you had not disobeyed...well, you and Cato would have met as strangers now as always was intended. 

The day had been an oppressively hot one in the middle of summer. You had no classes and no reason whatsoever to leave the relative safety of your home. For days, you had known _someone_ from one of the Career Districts would be visiting. He and his son arrived early that morning. All you caught of the latter was a brief look at his face before your father shoved you back inside with a warning to stay away from all foreign parties. 

At seven years old, how could you have been expected to follow such an order? Peacekeepers were typically the only outsiders you had the opportunity to see. Cato got stuck out in the yard—probably to prevent further interaction between the two of you while your fathers holed themselves up in the only other room of your house. You remembered clearly staring at him from the front window for most of the day. The scowling boy could not have been much older than you, and he looked so miserable sitting there by himself. Things were so much worse there that you tried to tell yourself the boy only looked that way because he was stewing over how much better things were where _he_ came from. 

Telling yourself that could not staunch your curiosity entirely. Your mother urged you into the kitchen to help with lunch, but every time her back turned you crept back to your station to watch the boy. Eventually you could stand it no longer. Peacekeepers and their punishments seemed so unimportant in comparison to the expression on Cato's face. Before you could be called again to the stove, you pushed out the front door and into the heat. His eyes fell immediately upon you. 

_"Hi!"_ you'd said. _"My name's [Name]. What's yours?"_

"If you know what's good for you, you'll stay out of my way." 

The boy in your memory did not say that. No, it was the present-day Cato, the taller one, the muscular one, the one that could snap your neck as easily as look at you. You started at his voice, then wondered if it wouldn't be so bad if he _did_ kill you right then and there. Peeta might have had a fighting chance if he didn't have you to look after. Cato wouldn't, though. Not now. Not when it would ruin _his_ chances, too. 

"You've told me that before," you whispered. 

"Now I mean it," he said stonily. "This isn't sneaking around while our dads are busy. This is war—and I'm going to be the one to win it." 

Of course he was. There had never been a doubt in your mind. Only Thresh could compare to Cato physically, and what good would that bulk do him up against a Career? Even on that afternoon the two of you had spent together as children, Cato had made it clear that one day he would win these Games. You just hadn't planned to be going up against him. 

Pursing your lips together made your mouth tremble harder than ever. When you finally found your voice again, it was shaking: "I don't want you to have to kill me." 

Just then, the light above Cato's doors flashed on. The elevator opened up again. He stepped inside. His eyes found yours for one brief moment—the same eyes that you had gazed into with such adoration when you had only been a child. If you hadn't changed, neither had he. 

"Then you know what to do," he said. 

He wasn't warning you. He was _begging_. No sooner had the words left his mouth than did the lift usher him up and out of your sight. The next time you saw each other, it would be as competitors once more. No more crying. No more soft words. No more children playing together without knowing how many laws doing so broke. Just two bloodthirsty rivals, each hoping against hope to outlast the other. You boarded your own elevator minutes later. Nothing Haymitch said now could make you feel any worse than you already did.


End file.
